My Dear Carruthers,

I have not received any correspondence from you since my last epistle. I can only assume incompetence on behalf of the sluggish Indian mail service. I am unsure if leaving undelivered dispatches in the postbag is deemed a treason as it is in the imperious and Great Albion shores, but even if it is not, it is fair to say that postal responsibilities are here very much neglected, because I’m sure you would have written by now, and if not, shame on you.

With regard to those inebriated elephants, I can only hope you have fixed your firearm, because they have surfaced here too. I quote from today’s Navhind Times:

“Three people have been trampled to death and two more wounded in a drunken rout by wild elephants in Assam. Wildlife officials said today that a herd of about a dozen elephants went amok after drinking rice beer on Tuesday in Marongi, a tribal village 290 KM east of Guwahati.

‘After entering the village the elephants first guzzled locally made rice beer kept in drums and then went on a rampage, killing three people, including a woman’, the official said.

During the past fortnight herds of wild elephants have been wreaking havoc in several parts of eastern Assam, especially in villages where tribal people brew large volumes of rice beer.

‘There have been several incidents of elephants drinking country liquor and then going berserk, at times plundering granaries and tearing apart huts, besides inflicting fatal attacks on human beings’ noted elephant expert Mr Kushal Konwar told us here at Navhind Times.”

Please be careful with those bush stills you mentioned, I am unsure of how to proof against tuskers, but I would imagine vigilance to be the ultimate key. What the hell ‘rice beer’ is I am currently making my business to find out.

Placing tragedies aside, I am happy to report that Julie and I have now successfully relocated to Arpora in Goa. We have secured a suitable Portuguese mansion for the next five months before our intended return to The Motherland. I have enclosed photographs of the same. You will observe that it really is a property of some magnitude, five bedrooms, two gargantuan halls, a splendid dining area and a garden compound of some thousand or more square feet, possibly even double that, a surveyor I am not. The landlord and proprietor of the same, one Vasco da Gama (I kid you not, he is Christened the very same) is an undersized descendant of the Iberian conquerors of this region, those stalwart fighters who perturbed our Imperial forces of so long ago, and I can say that he has inherited their spirited Gentlemanliness, he is, in short (and he is short), a man of whom I approve. He has been thoroughly decent in all respects. While giving us a tour of the acreage, he was at pains to identify a ‘scruffy’ area in the grounds that he recommended we maintain unkempt as a holding area for snakes. I disclosed to him that we had witnessed a medium sized python at close quarters only days before and he assured me that a comparable occurrence was entirely likely within his grounds were we not to heed his advice.

He has appointed a pleasing summerhouse towards the rear of the estate, which has proved ideal for Julie’s painting activities. I have counted thirty five coconut palms, three established mango trees, two jackfruit bearers and over twenty other fruit bearing trees and plant life within the grounds and our custodian assures me that he will be along at regular intervals with his staff for ‘plucking’, it seems he has a sister with a particular fondness for mangoes which he imparted was a preference that it was ‘more than his happiness was worth’ to ignore.

The kitchen is open to the elements with only some painted ironwork to guard against sentient (warm and cold blooded) raiders. Vasco informed me that he had to seal one alternative exit to the garden after repeated incidents with a medium sized monitor lizard, the self same having developed a predilection for a former tenant’s rations. As yet we have had no such incident other than the inevitable mosquito barrage, largely handled by the adequate battalion of gecco lizards, we do however have a plethora of ants who attach themselves to everything edible with a remarkable doggedness. Only yesterday I drowned some 300 or more of the blighters in a frying pan at which they had been drinking remaining oil, arranged in a perfect circle, surrounding their quarry like Sioux Indians or too many wolves.

To ensure continued cleanliness in this rendered stone monolith, we have engaged a manservant, one Siddesh, or Sid as we feel compelled to disregard him. Jeeves he is not. But a dab hand with a mop he is, and unlike so many of the whingeing classes, he is keen, the house is enormous and he remains undaunted. Needless to say we are paying him a princely sum for his humiliation.

On the work front things have settled very much to my advantage. I am now fully webenabled at home and have little more to do than sit around and keep occasional tabs on my toiling colleagues through phone calls and emails. I have managed to convince the uberboss that I am of equal use as an outstationed ambassador as I am a full time employee. Consequently I can now drink whisky at my desk, a habit I had to conceal in the office environment. I must say I am delighted to be free of the ludicrous daily office ritual of being stared at for being the solitary pasty fellow (here in Goa us palefaces are far more numerous). I am duty bound to be redeployed to the office in Pune for a couple of days on a monthly basis to keep myself availed of business travel and business hotel luxuries. As I see it, everyone needs a couple a days of mosquito-free sleep, it is in this way that the air conditioned business world has its advantages. There is talk of me continuing my employment back in England, but talk is cheap as well we know.

On a sombre note, the passing of the mighty John Peel saddened me greatly. I am quite sure that The Homeland is awash with heartfelt tributes to this most important of men, and they will all be relevant, for there are few men who have brought so much to so many for so little. In the military we are taught to expect death and get used to it, but it is always hard when one of the good people go down, one of our own. To be honest I am at pains to think of a more imperative man. Do you remember when we were kids and we used to talk about his radio shows so excitedly at school? I first heard ‘Gansters’ by The Specials on his show, can you imagine? He was so perfectly English, and at the same time was the ultimate arbiter of cosmopolitan taste, and he championed The Fall, the most important of all bands, while others simply didn’t, and for that alone I feel we owe him a debt of honour. State funeral certainly, burial at sea if so requested.
No more Peel Sessions…I’m finding that very hard to deal with.

Conversely, the leaving of Pune was largely a happy occurrence for Julie and I, and quite easy to deal with, for in truth the whole working-for-a-living juncture was less interesting than it might have been, and while the city itself had its advantages, we were ready to leave when we did.

Renouncing my industrious tailor was however something of a wrench. I informed him in earnest that he had contributed in no small way to my vanguardian debonairness, but he was of course somewhat glum, after five suits (including a powder blue lounge suit) and seven shirts he had got to know my intimate details, one becomes very attached you understand.

Parting from the great Mr Khan, my erstwhile car mechanic was also an emotional affair. Before I left, we took chai together in his preferred eatery, The Jubilee Rooms, where I assured him that he had made an indelible impression upon me as an exemplary businessman, and that while he had clearly fleeced me in nearly all transactions, he had done so in such a chivalrous and good mannered fashion that I felt evermore in his debt. I must say once again, that he is The Nicest Man, and if you ever get the chance, I urge you to convene with him if at all possible. I must also say that hanging around his shabby garage, idly chatting with his customers and his antediluvian neighbour-mechanic about Triumphs, Morris Oxfords and decommissioned Unicef vehicles is likely to remain the most pleasant memory I will hold of my time in Pune.

I will not miss “cleaning woman”, our unimaginative ‘cleaner’ who pushed a mop around our place occasionally, I will not miss the 8 a.m. sound of high-tech military aircraft loop-the-looping over the city, I will not miss the plethora of perilous motorcycle riders pulling out from all angles when I was trying to damn well drive my car in a straight line, I will not miss hearing ‘there’s always Coca Cola’ played electronically each time my neighbour reversed his car, I will not miss the bin-woman who rang my doorbell at six a.m. on each occasion that I had not put any rubbish out to enquire as to where it was (Julie tipped her against my wishes the day we left and told me gleefully once we’d set off) and I will not miss the neighbours’ kids playing cricket until all hours in the stairwell of our block, shouting ‘how was that?’ or ‘catch it’ after every single under arm tennis ball bowl.

But I will miss the British Library, cricket matches at the Poona Club, the Non Veg Platter at 1000 Oaks, The Mynas and Bulbuls (the most charming of birds), Kamal’s cookery classes, the member’s enclosure at the race course, the nasal cry of the newspaper wallah as he collects last week’s tabloids, and most of all I will miss the best flat I have ever lived in, its whiteness and its unprecedented view of the sun setting through one window and the moon rising in another.

But we have left Pune, and in leaving we took an audacious twelve hour drive in our unlikely vehicle through the Western Ghats to Goa via Kolaphur where we broke our journey to stay in one of our forefather’s citadels, the now decommissioned Shalini Palace, the former summer palace of the Maharajah of Maharastra (try saying that with a mouthful of cake). We stayed in the Maharani suite, resplendent with its own bar, balcony swing, a four-poster and a poster of the Swiss Alps (the ubiquitous Indian yearning). The bathroom suite was in faded pink and it might just be the biggest bathroom I have ever seen. There was a bidet, the first one I have seen in India, perhaps the only place I can think of where a bidet should really be mandatory. Attached to the impressive clock tower were the most substantial set of wasp nests I have ever seen, colossal fungal forms of writhing bees, why the hell they don’t remove the damn things I really don’t know, quite disgusting, I was tempted to throw stones, really.

Anyhow, the car made it and I must comment that it was far less of an ordeal than projected. Having the little car heaving with our possessions aided the suspension in an unexpected manner and with some dexterous après monsoon pothole avoidance, Julie navigated us unexpectedly easily on to our new intentions.

Having arrived safe and sound we were welcomed by our long standing friends at the top-hole Casablanca Hotel in Candolim and spent a few lazy days reacquainting ourselves with old friends. You will remember Anup, the tiny Calcuttan barman at Bom Successo Bar? Well, it seems he is moving on to a new beachside establishment where he assures us we will be equally able to take pink gins long into the night. You will also remember our former Rocinante, Peter Burgess, the most careful of drivers who took us all the way to Vijayangar that time without fear of the encroaching juggernauts on the mountain passes? Well, he has now secured a brand new vehicle and has become his own boss, and he expresses his sincere thanks for that ‘business loan’ we imparted over drinks that time, do you remember? Proof that a small amount can go a long way if well placed.

So we made it back unscathed, indeed we are all the more experienced for the foray into Indian city life, but really, truthfully, glad to be back in the sticks, back among hapless tourists and feeling once again like happy tourists ourselves. I am quite sure there will be further discord, this is India after all, but as time drifts inexorably on, we become accustomed to the alternating good and bad, the frustrations and the unequal beauty of this strange land, just as in combat, one becomes expectant of danger, and one faces it with two clear eyes…

Over the top old man.

Yours, as always, avoiding ambush,

Curzon Jnr